Fighting for freedom and family

Caught between her Patron father and her Commoner mother, Jessamy’s entire life is a balancing act, yet she yearns for the freedom to become whomever she wants. She relishes her secret sessions on the Fives court, where she trains for the intricate, dangerous athletic event that could someday bring her glory. But when Jes’ family is endangered by cruel Lord Gargaron, she must focus on saving them from a fate worse than death.

A witty alternative history of the Cold War

The trick to a good alternate history, particularly one that’s trying to be as impish and unpredictable as Crooked, is walking a delicious but delicate line between the weird and the plausible. You don’t want the story to veer into territory so unbelievable that it becomes a farce, but neither do you want to follow the straight and narrow. Austin Grossman (You) knows how to walk this line, and as a result he’s delivered a fiendishly entertaining book.

Feature by Adam Morgan

No matter how strange or outlandish, most fantasy novels take place in a world that bears at least some resemblance to our own. But when a fantasy writer takes the opportunity to cast a spell over the past, it provides a different sort of magic. Two new novels put imaginative twists on history.

Brooklyn unleashes spirits and shadows

For 10 years, Daniel José Older worked as an EMT in Brooklyn, and he blogged each day about what he’d witnessed the night before: tragedy and joy, blood and bandages, dead people and living people—and people who hovered somewhere in between, their fates as yet undecided.

Waging a magical war

Are you ready to dive into a world of magic and adventure, but a bit hesitant to pick up an 800-page doorstopper with a hefty roster of characters? Then Naomi Novik, author of the best-selling Temeraire series, has the perfect summer fantasy for you in the spellbinding Uprooted.

Rediscovering the universe

At first glance, The Only Words That Are Worth Repeating looks like Interstellar meets The Stand. Centuries from now, in a post-scientific society where astronomy “is regarded as a delusional cult scarcely more respectable than Jesus Lovers,” a powerful corporation discovers a perfectly intact Orion spacecraft hidden beneath the ruins of Cape Canaveral, along with detailed instructions from NASA on how to launch a voyage to Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon.

A world-spanning fantasy adventure

In V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic, three versions of London exist side by side in parallel universes. There’s Grey London, where magic is basically extinguished; Red London, where it’s abundant; and White London, where it’s somewhere in between (and where the control of it as a resource is jealously and viciously contested). There was also a fourth—Black London—whose inhabitants were devoured by magic and which should no longer exist. Schwab’s male protagonist, Kell, is one of the few with the power to travel between those Londons, and as such, serves as a diplomatic courier of sorts between the monarchies of each.